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The first few times that Percy had gone back to California with Annabeth to visit her family, and not have one of their lives in danger, he was a bundle of nerves. Even with Annabeth reassuring him that her dad liked him and that everything would be fine, which it always was. So now, on their third trip out to visit, which they usually did during winter breaks from school and for a week or so in the summer, before or after going to Camp Half-Blood, Percy finally stepped into California feeling pretty confident. Perhaps a bit too confident.
They only had another day left in their stay, and things had been going rather well. There hadn’t been any major issues between Annabeth and her stepmother, nothing that wouldn’t blow over within an hour or so. It all led to Annabeth taking her brothers, Matthew and Bobby, out to run a few errands that the boys needed for their school assignments and some near last-minute shopping they’d needed to do. So, she was out for a few hours with her brothers, and their (step)mom was out of the house as well, having picked up some extra shifts at work. So, it was just Percy and Frederick Chase at the house.
And it didn’t take much for Percy to be convinced to help his girlfriend’s dad put up some lights on the outside of their house.
Apparently, his wife didn’t want him or the boys going up on a ladder, and Annabeth had echoed those sentiments while they’d been there. Yet, when Annabeth had offered for her and Percy to put up the lights, her dad had quickly shut down the idea. So, when he’d asked Percy to help him with the task, he was a bit thrown off but accepted the request without hesitation. And that was how Percy ended up on the roof with Mr. Chase, attaching lines of string lights to the gutter that ran along the edge of the roof, while Frederick affixed some light-up snowflakes to the windows.
Once Mr. Chase showed him how to attach the little plastic clips to the edge of the gutter, since it wasn’t exactly something he had a ton of experience doing, given he’d grown up in NYC apartments, it was the only thing Percy did for nearly two hours. Luckily for him, it wasn’t cold enough for him to need gloves. And as Percy clipped half a million little plastic pieces onto the gutter, Mr. Chase peppered him with questions about Annabeth and their relationship, school, his mom and Paul, Camp Half-Blood, and New Rome; all of which Percy answered with a fair bit of thoughtfulness that he wasn’t entirely accustomed to. (It was just so much easier to say what he thought, rather than choosing his words carefully.) And after answering numerous questions for nearly an hour, her dad seemed satisfied enough to let it go, for now at least.
After Frederick had finished attaching the snowflake lights to the windows, he stayed further back on the roof while he helped untangle the light strings before Percy needed to clip them in. They fell into a surprisingly easy, productive rhythm, and in seemingly no time at all, Percy and Mr. Chase had nearly finished putting all the lights up along the rooftop when a familiar car pulled into the driveway. “What are you two doing up there?!” Annabeth shouted at the pair as she got out of the car, while Bobby and Matthew jumped out of the backseat of the vehicle, looking up at their sister’s boyfriend and their dad on the roof with nothing less than amazement.
Unfortunately for Percy, hearing Annabeth’s voice suddenly yelling at him, which wasn’t too abnormal for him to be on the receiving end of, was just enough to distract him from the fact that he was perched on the edge of the roof. And, while he tipped right over the edge of the roof, he hadn’t processed the fact that he was falling towards the ground before he was pulled to a stop by something tugging around his ankle. “Annie,” her dad called from just above Percy, sounding far closer than he’d been just a minute or so ago. “I need your help here,” Mr. Chase continued, sounding a bit panicked and strained, which wasn’t a tone that Percy had heard from the man before. But, he couldn’t dwell on it for too long, as all the blood in Percy’s body felt like it was rushing into his head, while he seemed to dangle a few feet above the ground, just waiting to fall headfirst.
He couldn’t see too much around him, given the state he was in. But Percy could hear Mr. Chase say something to Annabeth, which she didn’t verbally reply to, but he could hear someone moving around him, and it was all drowned out by her little brothers loudly reacting to whatever was going on. Maybe they were just that amused by Percy hanging from the rooftop with what he guessed was a light strand wrapped around his leg. “Dad, I got it, just grab his leg once he’s back up,” Annabeth said, handing out directions like she normally did back at Camp, now sounding like she was behind Percy, rather than on the ground below. The lights Percy was attached to gained a bit more slack as it, presumably, changed hands, and not long after, he got pulled back upwards.
The whole experience just reaffirmed his reasonable fear of heights.
Down below, Matthew and Bobby excitedly cheered for their sister, who’d done something ‘super cool’ to get up to the roof as fast as she did, and their dad. As Percy felt his stomach slide along the roof’s shingles, he’d never been more relieved to feel the coarse tiling rub against his skin. (Although, if he’d been wearing his coat, he wouldn’t have felt it at all.) Once Percy was firmly back on the roof, Mr. Chase climbed down the ladder that was leaning against the wall a few feet away, as he dragged the boys inside. While Annabeth’s warm hands held the sides of his head, keeping his attention on her while she looked him over, Percy felt a shiver run down his spine.
“I leave you here for almost three hours,” Annabeth muttered, with a choked laugh latching onto the tail end of her words, “and I come back to you falling off the roof.”
“To be fair, I didn’t almost fall off until you were here.” Percy countered, which earned him a teary, half-heated glare. “Okay, okay, time and place.” He added shortly after, hoping to appease her enough so she’d stop glaring at him, which he knew was out of concern, not anger, “I am sorry for accidentally falling off the roof, if that makes up for it.”
That response got him another, short laugh from Annabeth, as she was seemingly satisfied enough with her brief examination to instead drop her head onto his shoulder as she replied, “You don’t need to apologize for that, Seaweed Brain, it’s just, it was an accident.” Despite the fact that she wasn’t as nervous as she had been after first climbing onto the roof, Annabeth made no move to withdraw her warm hands from his face, which was perfectly okay with him, considering how fucking cold it had gotten all of a sudden out there. Maybe that was just a side effect of almost falling off the roof. But, then she pulled back as she asked, “Is it snowing?”
Percy caught himself from saying something stupid, specifically along the lines of ‘he wasn’t the one who lived in California, so he didn’t know if snowfall was common there or not.’ But, he got distracted from voicing his thoughts as Annabeth’s hands slowly slid off his face while she looked at the snowflakes falling around them. “Uh, it sure does seem like it is,” Percy instead replied, which still earned him a look, not quite a glare, but a look from her nevertheless.
“Is this, uh,” there was only a handful of times that Percy could remember Annabeth being at a loss for words, not knowing exactly what was happening, “Is this your doing?”
He hadn’t thought about that. “Uh, I mean, I don’t think so,” Percy replied, looking away from Annabeth to look at the snow descending upon them, “I can’t exactly say I’ve tried to make it snow before, so, I guess it’s possible.”
Annabeth laughed as she shuffled around on the roof, until the side of her body pressed against his as she dropped her head onto his shoulder. “You’re ridiculous, you know that, right?” Annabeth asked, as they sat contentedly on the rooftop for a little while, letting the cold, snowfall fall onto their skin and melt away. And, after a few minutes had passed, she added, “We should probably get down now. Before Bobby and Matthew get the wrong idea and start climbing up here, too. That’s the last thing I need for them to start doing.”
“Yeah, probably,” Percy returned, waiting for Annabeth to pull herself off him before he moved a muscle, “We need to be a good influence and all that.” He got another laugh from Annabeth as she led them off the roof, safely this time, and no light strings attached.